When Will Postal Operators Begin Charging for Receiving Paper Mail?

November 24, 2008 | Filed Under Earth Class Mail, The Postal Future | Leave a Comment 

By Ron Wiener, CEO & Postmaster General, Earth Class Mail

With the advent of Trusted Postal Email approaching, several industry analysts have asked us recently when posts might start charging recipients to continue having postal mail delivered in paper form. That’s an excellent question, with plenty of comparables to examine. Some banks charge higher per-use teller fees to customers who aren’t willing or able to use cheaper ATMs for their transactions. Cell-phone companies charge recipients to receive phone calls, in addition to the caller being charged for the same number of minutes.

As many national posts struggle with a worsening fiscal deficit due to declining volumes coupled with ever-increasing operating costs, they first scrutinize the most expensive customers they must serve: rural residents. In the United States, where the USPS already owes the federal government $7B in deficit-covering loans, and has experienced a volume decrease of 9 billion mail pieces in 2007, millions of rural customers are already forced to take free PO Boxes and make a long, expensive drive to get their mail. Read more

What’s Behind the Title of ‘Postmaster General’?

October 6, 2008 | Filed Under Earth Class Mail, The Postal Future | Leave a Comment 

By Ron Wiener, CEO and Postmaster General, Earth Class Mail

People are often curious why some of our senior management-team members append their corporate titles with classic “postal” titles. For example, our Chief Operating Officer is also our “Deputy Postmaster General.”

The practice started at our company a few years ago when we introduced the novel concept of Earth Class Mail online postal mail to the media and reporters often responded with confused looks. Sometimes it took them awhile to understand that we are not an email-service provider – that we instead bring analog paper mail into the digital age and provide an online alternative to traditional P.O. Box and mail-forwarding services. We tried to address this misperception by weaving the words ”post” and ”postal” into our website copy, press releases, and marketing materials – and, yes, even into our titles.

Our aim was simply to overcome the natural pattern-matching that occurs inside the human brain. When a person hears about a new concept the first thing she will try to do is match it up with something she is already familiar with ― to categorize it and learn what it is by comparison with the known. Because our company name is most often seen or repeated with a “.com” on the end of it, people sometimes automatically categorize us, at first blink, as an email platform. Read more

What Can Posts Have That Google Never Will?

October 1, 2008 | Filed Under Earth Class Mail, The Postal Future | Leave a Comment 

By Cameron Powell, VP of Strategic Development, Earth Class Mail. A modified version of this article was requested for publication in the postal-industry media. Each image in this entry can be clicked to launch a larger version in a separate browser window.

People are always talking about Google. Google this, Google that. The talking heads say that Google – search, local, print, and wireless all in one – is the future of advertising. (More breaking news: the Google phone, “G1,” was just released to capture searches for and present advertising. Now back to our story.)

What they really mean, of course, is not Google the company but the new model Google has proven, because students of business know that like any father great or small, Google will eventually be overtaken or even eaten by its offspring. The connected-advertising model is growing at over 20% year after year, while mail volume is shrinking and will diminish for as long as the number of delivery points and the cost of gas go up. Is that why these smart people aren’t talking about the posts’ technology future?

What’s disturbing is that the posts aren’t talking about the posts either. Can it really be that they are too close to what they have, or too focused on what they have been doing, to see what they alone could do in the near future? Read more

A Paperless Life

September 18, 2008 | Filed Under Earth Class Mail, Testimonials | Leave a Comment 

By Jeff Wenker, Earth Class Mail

Creating a paperless life is a bold idea that addresses one of the primary challenges of our modern world. How can we regain control of our lives, lives that are slipping away from us bit by bit as time-consuming daily tasks stop us from doing the things we love?

In 2007, Tim Ferris, author of the provocative book “The 4-Hour Work Week” asked the following question: “What would you have to do to never again touch mail?” He then recommended Earth Class Mail (Thanks, Tim!)

We’ve been talking with many of our expat customers over the past few weeks and while they appreciate the mobility our service provides them when they’re abroad, they usually conclude by saying something like, “When I return to the states, I’m going to keep using your service. It’s greatly simplified my life.” (e.g., the story of Earth Class Mail customer Nancy Haferman in Singapore).

Let’s face it: people are busy. So busy, in fact, that an entire industry has evolved to help people better manage their lives. Websites like 43 Folders and Life Hacker typify the “Get Things Done” mentality.

Online postal mail is another in a growing list of technologies that can enhance personal productivity. We are constantly listening to our customers in order to refine and expand the service we provide because we know it’s helping them streamline their lives. That means more than just being efficient, it means freeing up time to do what matters most, however you want to define that.

If you have any ideas you’d like to share with your fellow Earth Class Mail customers, feel free to let us know and we’ll include them here or in our e-newsletter.

If Google Got Into Mail

August 12, 2008 | Filed Under Earth Class Mail, The Postal Future | Leave a Comment 

By Cameron Powell, VP of Strategic Development, Earth Class Mail. A modified version of this article was requested for publication by Postal Technology International.

Note: The views expressed in the following dramatization do not necessarily reflect the views of its author or of Earth Class Mail. The views do, however, reflect what people in an innovative, fast-moving, world-beating company might think and say.

If Google got into mail, mail would never look the same again. Google would digitize mail, move a larger and larger share of mail and mail readers to the Internet, and either take market share from traditional businesses or put them out of business entirely.

Early users of Google may recall reaching the search results pages and scratching their heads. How will these people make any money? you may recall asking. What’s their model? In the early days, Google did not have any paid ads. They displayed only what are now called the natural, or organic, search results.

Now we know. Google provided an extremely useful service that made life better. Only then did it introduce the advertising.

One can imagine Google would begin its assault on the beaches of mail by bringing its generals into one room and asking them the same question its founders asked when they started their search engine:

Sergey: Where is the expensive consultant?

Larry (pointing): He’s in the corner. He’s the one with the marker.

(Expensive Consultant raises his hand, the one with the marker).

Sergey: Tell him to write on the white board, “Strategic Objective.”

Larry (nodding at Expensive Consultant): Make it so. Read more

How the Posts are Uniquely Positioned to Cure the Fundamental Flaws of E-Mail as a Replacement for Physical Mail

August 10, 2008 | Filed Under Earth Class Mail, The Postal Future | Leave a Comment 

By Ron Wiener, CEO & Postmaster General, Earth Class Mail (Note: This article will be appearing in an upcoming issue of Postal Technology International.)

It took posts three centuries to reach their peak worldwide volume of about 440 billion pieces of mail per year. Contrast that with email, which has exploded in popularity in just the past decade to the tune of over 50 billion messages per DAY (net of spam), not counting billions of additional MMS and SMS messages that these days may contain everything from utility bills to airline reservations, in addition to teenage girl chat. The one billion PCs in the world are like tiny post offices able to receive mail from anywhere in the world. Add in the sales of over a billion more portable, ultra-miniature post offices sold each year – cell phones, iPhones, Blackberries, et al. – and it is easy to see why email and text messaging have reached such behemoth levels of usage in such a short time span. Read more

Are You Ready for the $10 Postage Stamp?

August 3, 2008 | Filed Under Earth Class Mail, The Postal Future | Leave a Comment 

By Ron Wiener, CEO & Postmaster General, Earth Class Mail

[Editor’s Note: This special feature article is longer than a blog article would normally be. It is part of the upcoming online publication entitled Earth Class Mail – The White Paper, Volume II. If you’ve never read Volume I, you can download it here.]

Might we see the USPS issue a $10 postage stamp in our lifetime?

It may not be such a ludicrous prospect. Given its scale economics the USPS is the most productive post in the world, processing about 212 billion pieces of mail per annum (48% of the world’s total volume of mail) with less than 800,000 employees. It delivers more mail per-household and per-business than any other nation, and it does so with the lowest ratio of letter carriers to mail volume.

Of course its capital equipment investment is also the greatest in the world, and its overall carbon footprint dwarfs that of any other national postal operator. Last year it spent $6.5 billion on energy, including the fuel to keep 220,000 trucks — the largest vehicle fleet in the world -– rolling from door to door throughout a vast geographical territory from the wilds of Alaska to the dense concrete jungle of Manhattan. Read more

What the Screen Actors Guild and Postal Unions Have in Common

July 24, 2008 | Filed Under Earth Class Mail, The Postal Future | Leave a Comment 

By Ron Wiener, CEO & Postmaster General, Earth Class Mail

If you work in the postal industry — and especially if you are a member of a postal workers’ union — you may not have been paying much attention to the SAG (Screen Actors Guild) dispute with the entertainment industry, but you should be. While the SAG’s beef with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) isn’t over jobs but payscale, it’s fundamentally about how the Internet has irrefutably altered their industry’s business model.

In the good old days life was simple. Actors would get paid residuals on their work based on the revenues that their TV shows and movies generated when they were rebroadcast. Along came DVDs as a new distribution channel and the SAG had to renegotiate their union contracts based on this newfangled medium. But that was nothing compared to the much less definable world of Internet distribution.

Today a television show or movie could wind up being distributed for free on hulu.com, for a small download fee on iTunes, or on any number of other outlets. Actors are trying to protect their incomes at a time when it isn’t even clear what the revenue models are for the production companies in this brave new world, and negotiations have been arduous and, so far, not completely successful. Read more

Earth Class Mail VP speaks before Postal Regulatory Commission

July 7, 2008 | Filed Under Earth Class Mail, Industry News | 1 Comment 

“The single most transformative path the Postal Service’s evolution can and should take.” That was the focus of Earth Class Mail VP of Strategic Development Cameron Powell’s May 21 testimony before the Postal Regulatory Commission in Flagstaff, Ariz. Earth Class Mail was invited to testify at the PRC hearings regarding the potential of online postal mail as a future technology for adoption by both the U.S. Postal Service and its mail recipients.

Earth Class Mail VP Cameron PowellIn his testimony, Powell discussed why the Postal Service must join the digital and Internet revolutions against a backdrop of consumer dissatisfaction with traditional mail delivery, soaring fuel costs, dwindling revenue streams, increased emphasis on environmental stewardship throughout society, and rapidly changing consumer behavior and preferences in personal and business communications.

As Powell asserted in his advance written testimony, “what I propose does not replace or threaten the USPS in any way. It’s an empowering, transitional technology that will in fact guarantee the Postal Service’s survival.”

Click here to read a PDF of the complete advance written testimony.

Why Start-Up Leadership Isn’t for Everyone

May 16, 2008 | Filed Under Start-Up Junkies | Leave a Comment 

By Carl Hicks Jr., COO, Earth Class Mail

Participating in MOJO HD TV show Start-Up Junkies™ was a unique experience for our company. When we started out, there was concern that the producers would either overemphasize the fun and excitement or underemphasize the constant risks and stresses of start-up life. In the end, I think they probably struck a reasonable balance between the light and the dark sides, with perhaps a little too much invented drama -– but hey, television has to be made interesting or no one will watch it. It’s hard to make our workaday reality of endless meetings and emails compelling for television viewers, so hats off to the producers for finding a way to make the show interesting.

We’ve received many fan letters from viewers, usually falling into one of two categories: A) I’m doing a start-up now or have done start-ups before and love how your show illustrates what that’s really like, or B) I’ve never done a start-up but it looks like so much fun compared to the big company scene that I’m itching to go start one. This blog entry is for the folks who might fall in the latter camp.

Assuming that anyone could thrive in a start-up environment is like assuming that everyone who enlists in the Army will qualify for Special Forces. It is one thing to work at a start-up… that just takes a certain tolerance for financial risk, long hours and a highly ambiguous conception of what needs to get done each new day. The reality is that most people aren’t cut out for start-ups, even if they think they are. It is another thing altogether to lead a start-up to success, and a whole other thing again to lead it through to each consecutive inflection point of growth.

Read more

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